Shooting quality videos with low budget video gear is getting easier every day. When KuhlToys Started out all we had was a Canon handicam and a Rode microphone for the iPhone 4. That first episode has over 100,000 views so it can’t be that bad can it?

These days we have upped the game. That little Canon Handicam is still in inventory but doesn’t come out much. That said we are still shooting with pretty low budget video gear.

Most episodes are shot on a Canon SL2, and a Canon 70D. We bought the SL2 as a backup and found that it has the better face tracking of the 80D so it moved up to the Camera 1 slot.

Canon 70D – The Dead Soldier

Today while setting up to shoot B roll with the 70D about 400 miles from our studio, the 70D wouldn’t wake up. It turns out that the 70D has a shirt history of failures when being used for video shooting. Several forums say that the 70D overheats when shooting video and eventually a small capacitor on the main board pops and you are done.

Having a 70D freeze or quit while you are shooting is one thing. This one finished the last shot and just wouldn’t fire up this morning. Much like a dead battery. That thought lead us to find a video showing this little tiny switch inside the battery door. It didn’t help but it was worth a shot.

Thankfully our main studio is very close to a Canon center so we can save the $45 shipping fee and drop it off for repair. Anyone want a deal on a “repaired” 70D body. Knowing it isn’t good for long video shoots means it might have to go. It has been a great camera too.

Stay tuned and we’ll tell you if there is something stupid we did when it comes back from Canon.

Have you wondered what it really takes to make videos that people watch? Well if you watched the very first episode of KühlToys, there really wasn’t much to it and that video quickly hit 50,000 views on YouTube with no advertising money spent at all.

There are a lot of factors when it comes to making a great video, but none of them has to be expensive. We use a lot of gear now, and there are days we go back to just a camera and a microphone. Sadly we still haven’t heard a built in microphone or camera top microphone that we thought was good enough. The sound always killed the video that way.

We made this video for clients of the Bourquin Group, our parent company to help them make their own videos if they want to. Smaller businesses starting out just don’t have the budget to pay for a production company to create videos like we do, so we wanted to share how little is really required to get a good quality video online for your business.

Soon we will have a complete module in our business owners academy program, but for now, here is a peek behind the curtain.

For now here is all the gear you need to get started in your office or even your garage, the same way we did almost 10 years ago! Check out our first KuhlToys blog at KuhlToys.wordpress.com.

The Search for Kühl Toys is a long and dusty trail. When the road is paved and clear, Kühl Toys just don’t exist. At least most of the time. We have stumbled upon the new Mercedes SLS being road tested and found a few things you might see next season.

But every once in a while you see what should be a Kühl Toy only to find that… Well, it isn’t.

That happened to us yesterday. While on the road in search of a new Kühl Toy we spotted the very distinctive kidney grill of a BMW with a camo cover over the BMW logo. Look at this picture and you tell me how well they hid this turd. From the way the car was parked and our vantage point, we couldn’t see what it was so we rushed over to check it out. It was like a kid thinking he saw the ice cream man was around the corner only to find it was the dog catcher.

Sadly we found that BMW was testing what looked like a bad image of a Mercedes B-Class. Why would BMW copy the ugliest Benz? As an electric car the boxy B-Class isn’t a bad looking car, but it isn’t a good looking car and it clearly isn’t a Kühl Toy. Sitting right next to a supercool Mini Countryman S, the new BMW is just downright odd.

Keep in mind that we think the BMW 3 series wagon or “estate” as the brits call them is one of the coolest grocery getters out there. It holds ski’s, surfboards and your dog. The thing we saw, not likely.
You tell us what you think, but this is a car we aren’t even going to accept for testing at Kühl Toys, even if it’s free. Maybe we would let an intern use it to get us coffee, but not with the KühlToys logo on it that is for sure. That mini countryman, we’d like to play with. Drop it, tint it, surfboard rack it, and you might just have a cool toy er Kühl Toy.